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BLOOMFIELD HILLS – The Farmington Hills Unified Flyers defeated the Clarkston Wolves 4-1 in the third place game of the OAA Red Playoff Tournament Saturday evening.

Trailing 1-0 entering the second period, the Flyers came out hot and dominated the second period, firing 17 shots on net against just 5 for the Wolves. When the dust settled, the Flyers had turned a 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 lead.

Captain Reede Burnett got the comeback started with a power play goal at the 10:14 mark, firing a blue line slap shot through a screen in front to tie the score. Four minutes later, the Flyers crashed the net on an odd man rush with Matt Goldin banging home his own rebound to give Farmington Hills Unified the lead. Eric Stanis doubled the Flyers’ lead with just under five minutes left in the period when T.J. Zak dropped a pass into the slot and Stanis stepped into it, letting fly with a hard wrist shot that zipped into the back of the net.

“We came out and did the little things,” Farmington Hills Flyers coach Ken Anderson said. “It seems like we were bottled up in their zone. We kept our feet moving on our forecheck, and when we do that we can bottle up some good teams,” he added.

Clarkston had opened the scoring in the first period when Garrett Polish’s wrist shot from just inside the blue line streaked into the back of the net midway through the period. But in the second period and third period, penalties caught up to the Wolves a bit, and while they were able to hold the Flyers to just one power play goal in seven tries, all the time killing penalties hurt their comeback attempt.

“We took too many penalties,” Clarkston head coach Bryan Krygier said. “I think we had 27 minutes of penalties. That’s a period and a half of hockey of being on defense, and when that happens, there’s not too many games you’re going to win. We won the first period, and that’s it. You’re not going to win too many hockey games winning one period.”

One bright spot for the Wolves was the play of goaltender Nick Surovec who made 29 saves on the night, giving his team a chance to try and start the comeback. “I thought Nick played well,” Kyrgier said.

Overall, the Flyers captains led the way in this one. T.J. Zak had two assists, Burnett opened the scoring with a goal, and Stanis finished with three points, including an empty net goal to close out the scoring.

Anderson was pleased with how his team performed in their last game before the state playoffs start on Monday with the Flyers hosting Birmingham Unified. “We like our feeling. We like what we did, and we’ve got to keep this momentum going a little bit for Monday and see what happens.”

Clarkston will attempt to regroup heading into Tuesday’s playoff opener against their fierce rivals, the Lake Orion Dragons.